The Rhizome — Deleuze & Guattari

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In my work I sketch, scribble and catch intriguing thoughts, images in the moment. I experience this constantly. I draw from distinct studio practices, and yet when I map things out, unexpected crossovers appear. This is not something I construct deliberately, it surfaces through my reflective notes, through language that reveals itself on the page. And then I begin to recall it in my body: similar impulses, intuitive thinking, the same quality of decision-making arriving from somewhere I can't quite name

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What happens when I sketch in this way? Rhizomatic theory (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) resists linearity — there is no clear beginning or end, hierarchy shifts or dissolves, and new surprising connections emerge. When sketching I experience this as a live connection between movement and paper. As Deleuze and Guattari write, "the map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification" (1987, p. 12). This sings to me,  connectivity and acceptance, but stay present and aware. 

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My dance practice does not develop along a single trajectory, it spreads laterally, makes unexpected connections, and resists resolution. When I look at the mind maps and drawings I make during practice, lines branching outward, looping back, crossing unexpectedly, I recognise the rhizome not as an abstract concept but as the actual shape of how I work.

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Merleau-Ponty places lived, bodily experience at the centre of how we know the world. The body is not a tool of the mind, it is the site of perception, understanding, and meaning-making.

For me this is a matter of fact, beginning in the body. We exist in our bodies and the knowledge we carry there is not separate from who we are. It is who we are.

I work with dance in the moment, simultaneously and persistently. I facilitate, I practise, I collaborate, and I do not compromise. All of it through the body.

My recent work on NOT YET de(part) is an exemplar of this.

The instant writing and inner dialogue that follow each movement session are attempts to stay close to that knowledge before it dissolves.

A very recent discovery has opened an entirely new channel between movement and articulation. During SIB Dance Lab 2026 (14–19 June 2026), my collaboration with Dr. Jorge Crecis and Diego Marin introduced me to the possibilities of instant voice recording with automatic AI transcription. The experience was, quite simply, mind-blowing, a revelation of what is now possible at the intersection of embodied practice and digital technology. Through this method I have been able to capture fleeting, embodied thoughts that before slipped away entirely, too fast, too physical for writing alone to catch.

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This discovery is so recent it is still unfolding. It has already changed how I think about documentation, and about what it means to move knowledge from the body into language.

This research does not begin with a fixed method which I apply to the practice. I recognise that the methodology is itself emergent, it develops in response to what the practice demands. As one of my early process maps puts it, this is about allowing time to pass, to grow and develop without forcing resolution. I like to visit Thinking Fast and Slow by D.Kahneman, and often reflect upon wheather the fast thinking ( intuitive and emotional) indeed can happen slow. 

The primary site of inquiry is my own movement practice, conducted as a solo investigation over six weeks, following my existing working schedule and artistic routines. In selected instances, other participants are invited into the space for shared movement explorations, expanding the solo inquiry through encounter and what I call meeting the others.

The research methods include:

• Movement practice — sustained, regular engagement with my own moving body as the primary research instrument

• Instant writing — writing immediately after or during movement, capturing experience before reflection smoothes it into narrative

• Drawing and sketching — visual thinking that bypasses language; the charcoal drawings in this archive are not illustrations of movement but movement translated directly into mark-making

• Inner dialogue — attending to the voices, impulses, and resistances that arise during practice; what I have long called the movement from within

• Video documentation — selected recording of movement explorations to enable return, reflection, and analysis

• Mind mapping — spatial, non-linear thinking on paper; tracing the connections between movement qualities, materials, environments, and states

These methods are not hierarchical. They are used in combination, with the emphasis shifting depending on what the practice calls for on any given day. This flexibility is not a lack of rigour — it is the rigour, responsive to an object of study (the moving body) that cannot be pinned in place.

This approach aligns with practice-led research methodology in the arts, where the practice is both the method and the outcome of inquiry. The emergent quality of the methodology mirrors the rhizomatic structure at the heart of the conceptual framework: no fixed entry point, no predetermined destination — only the practice, unfolding.

One of the central commitments of this research is to resist the separation of theory and practice. The theoretical frameworks are not applied as an afterthought, they are encountered through the practice, tested and complicated by it.

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Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome becomes tangible when a movement unexpectedly connects to a gesture from a different project, a different year, a different body. Habitus reveals itself in the automatic, in what my body does before I decide to do it. And Merleau-Ponty's claim that the body is the site of perception becomes undeniable in the experience of instant writing: words that arrive from the body, not from the thinking mind.

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This section will grow across the research period to include video excerpts, sketches, written reflections, and analytical notes. These materials are not illustrations of the research, they are the research.

This MA research emerges from, and speaks back to, a body of artistic practice developed over many years. Projects such as FRAMED, Exploratorium, and Et lite stykke kunst are not simply prior works; they are part of the same ongoing inquiry into movement, space, and the body.

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My recent collaboration on NOT YET de(part), with AAIS, KHIO, and Færderbiennalen, is perhaps the clearest example of this way of working. The project came into being through a series of coincidences, a willingness to say yes, and a capacity to immerse fully. It was too large and too fast for a linear, structured approach. It had to be allowed to emerge, through the movement itself.

Some projects cannot be planned into existence. They have to be moved into existence.

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Within the six-week research period, I am tracking:

• Shifts in movement quality — what changes when I am also a researcher watching myself?

• Moments of shift or surprise — where does the practice resist or exceed the theory?

• Points of integration — where does a theoretical concept suddenly feel true in the body?

Progress is not always linear, and insight does not always arrive on schedule. What I am building is a capacity for sustained, attentive inquiry, a practice of noticing that runs alongside, and feeds back into, the movement practice itself.

Mid Oct. 2026

Moving into 2025, I find myself at a threshold, one I have been moving towards for a long time. The word that spoke to me in the very beginning of this MA is myriad: a constellation of possibilities that feels both expansive and oddly familiar, as if it names something I have always been doing without quite having the language for it. Founding SIB, building DansINN, touring schools with A Little Piece of Art, mentoring, performing, being a mum, these do not form a single line. They never have. What I am beginning to understand is that their apparent sprawl is not a lack of focus but a form in itself.

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I come to this MA as someone who has spent over two decades negotiating between body and institution, between the studio and the schools, between my own artistic creativity and the structures that fund or resist it. The way I experience is my learning has never been separate from my living. Thought arrives through movement, knowledge through doing, and reflection often appears through scribbling in the margins of a rehearsal note at the end of a long day.

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This process, I am starting to recognise, is the map. Not a map I draw in advance, but one that sketches out as I move. It is what will guide this MA journey and, I hope, the research that follows.

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